


No Glue for our Broken Edges

by thegirlwhoknits



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 02:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1452076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlwhoknits/pseuds/thegirlwhoknits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Peter both have bad days, days when the horrors they've lived with catch up to them.  And they've learned how to put each other back together, even if the edges don't always fit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Glue for our Broken Edges

Stiles has days, now, when he’s not sure if he’s real.  He tells Peter he might really just be an animated pile of bandages, a copy of the person the nogitsune stole.  It happens most often after his bad nights, restless ones full of choked-off screams.  Peter recognizes the signs: Stiles moves quietly around the house, his movements still, but not with the confident stillness of the trickster.  He moves like a ghost, like he’s afraid too much motion will cause him to disintegrate.

Peter’s job on these days is to keep the rest of the world at bay—the loud, aggressive concern of his family and friends can drive him further away, leave him scrubbing at imaginary bloodstains in his clothes or hiding in dark corners in the closets. Once he smashed a mirror, and Peter stitched up his arm at home, afraid to take him to the hospital because he wasn’t sure Stiles would survive being committed a second time.

He’s learned to wait, to keep his distance and push down his instinct to hold and comfort, to wrap his broken lover in warmth and scent and _mate._ When Stiles starts to sob, folding in on himself wherever he happens to be, then Peter can start putting him back together.

 

Peter has bad days too—the dark of the moon, the anniversary of the fire, his sister’s birthday.  He rages around the house, taking his anger out on everything but Stiles, whom he circles around like the eye of his personal hurricane.  Stiles ignores him, goes about his business, leaving the mess where it lies. The cleaning up and repairing will help calm Peter later, when the fury empties out of him and leaves behind the cold ache of loss.

When he’s ready he comes to Stiles, wrapping his arms around him from behind, his forehead resting on the back of Stiles’ head. Stiles curls around him on the bed or the couch, runs his fingers through Peter’s hair as he leans against his shoulder and tells him stories about his family: how close he and Talia were before she became Alpha, what Derek was like as a baby, how his mother danced along with him to the radio as they washed dishes.

Each story feels like a confession.  He trusts Stiles and Stiles alone with his memories; knows he will treat them like the treasures they are and not taint them with guilt or bitterness.  Sometimes he gives Peter memories in return, of his mother before her illness and his father after it.  For a little while their edges fit seamlessly, the cracks in them invisible to the naked eye.

 

Their bad days haven’t overlapped, so far. Peter wonders what will happen if they do, who will bring them back? Or maybe, if they finally break all at once, fall apart completely—maybe they can find a way to fit back together into something whole.


End file.
